Jeremy Whorton: I have something to say

I have had clinical depression since I was 14 that has relatively crippled every aspect of my life and lead to multiple suicide scares. Bouts of insomnia and sleeping 16 hours a day, struggling to eat, go to the gym, simply a struggle to do the things I thought I loved. I was battling the same small battles every day, wearing on both me and those close to me making relationships tough. I had an inability to explain what was going on, especially since on the surface I had every privilege imaginable and truly worked my hardest to maximize those. 

But what I didn’t realize is truly how hard I was working, the constant grind that every day, week was. Eventually the grind was getting to be too much and I had nothing left. It’s not that I wanted to kill my self, I still wanted to keep fighting. I loved those around me too much and even to a degree respected those that have helped, from coaches, teachers, parents of friends, honestly most people that I have any sort of relationship with and felt like I owed it to them to keep trying. But I couldn’t keep doing it. Every day I was waking up in more pain and the grind was getting harder. The things that helped and made it easier suddenly became almost impossible. I was to the point that I had to “get myself up” to do things, even fun things a trip to Hawaii with my two best friends I had to give everything I had to make it through like 75% of the trip. And every time the tank hit empty, it was harder to refill and the pain was more intense. 

The same thing happened after a trip to California and I crashed so hard I had nothing left and I spent the night I got back laying in bed staring at the fan using everything I had to not get up and go to the kitchen. The morning came and the only reason it did was that I knew I was seeing my therapist in the morning. I was placed on a 72 hour ER hold, took a leave from work and began an outpatient program which I attended every day and tried to work on treating my depression. To be honest, I was excited to not have any stressors or goals besides get healthy. For the first time in my life I felt like I didn’t owe anyone anything or have to do something for someone else, it could be about me and getting healthy. My 8 weeks pass and I make some progress, definitely, but mostly I just got back to the baseline I was “functioning” at before. At this point, I have tried and retired multiple medications, constant therapy as well as other types of therapy, this program, meditating and yoga, acupuncture, everything it felt like. And every time I made some progress and it either got me back to my baseline or little bit above for a second but the moment I would change routine or have to do more than what was asked of me I’d crash and be back at the start. But, I was at my baseline when the time was approaching to leave the program. I was definitely trending up as I don’t think it’s possible to trend down from where I was, but I’m nervous about my program ending. I still feel stuck, like the cycle is just back at the top but in due time will come crashing back down. I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’ve seen this movie a thousand times before and don’t think I can 1,001. 

One night I go for a walk late night just to get out and probably to get zyns tbh. By the time I get back to my apartment I bought a puppy. I didn’t really mean to, I had been thinking about it for a while but something happened and I had purchased the 3rd overall pick of a litter available in 2 weeks in Ohio. And what a blessing he has been. I learned later that he was born the night I got back from California. It wasn’t all roses, but he truly is an angel. There were practical things that helped like we had to get up and get out of bed, go walk, I had another living thing to care for that felt bigger than me. But the emotional part, it was just me and him and we were learning the world together. Through him I am able to see his innocence, curiosity, love for life and they always say that dogs are like their owner, but he started to teach me to be like him. 

I’m back at work and I was nervous about adding stressors and not being able to handle it all, especially with a puppy who’s a ways from potty trained (but ya he can dap me up, practical things first). And this is the part that I get to plug Nike. Work was never my issue, nothing that happened at work ever would contribute to my mood, but there were so so so many days that I just physically couldn’t do it. I unfortunately got way to good at working from bed and bs’ing my way through the day, week. At the same time, there wasn’t a lot being asked of me, the person who was to be my mentor and teach me had to leave about 2 months into my job and I felt very much on my own and that I could just hide, collect a paycheck. I was a bad employee. The most money I made Nike was from filling my closet. And this did cause me stress. I am an achiever, it’s who I have always been and couldn’t be anything else, but now I have this condition that has so severely damaged who I am that I couldn’t be who I wanted to be or rather knew I could be and that would wear on me as much as anything.

Work was just another daily example of that. But anyways, from the original incident, I went to my manager and explained what had happened and she was so so understanding and helpful in making sure I took whatever time and space I needed to get healthy. I know that sounds like something that should be a given, or obvious, but so many things in todays world and especially around mental health may have the best intentions but just don’t work in practice but it was refreshing to just have things work. When I came back to work, my manager again was super patient, moved me teams so I can “start fresh” and made sure that I could reintegrate gracefully and at my own pace. Nike paid my whole salary the whole time, supported me every step of the way, and really couldn’t have handled the whole process better and I’m so grateful for that. 

Some time passes, things are going okay, still kind of the same but then my psychiatrist makes a tweak to a medication and finally, finally, after two years of trying constantly, I find something that has some positive effect, even just in the slightest. There are glimpses, moments of joy. One of the best examples is Stanley and I spent a week in the mountains, just the two of us in a pretty quiet environment and then when we returned to the city, I felt culture shock through him. I could see him have to readjust to the speed, the noise, smells, and through him I felt the same way but with humans, routines, etc. I am super fortunate and eternally grateful for the life I was born into but I have been able to travel some pretty cool places, including the slums of Kenya, and I have never felt culture shock in my life but here I was, in the city I grew up in, feeling this energy for the first time.

Now is where I think it gets interesting. I have long been silently doing research on the use of psychedelics to treat mental illness. It would come up occasionally in therapy and we always threw the idea around but there was always so much changing with my medications and the constant rollercoaster made it so that the time was never right or something we seriously considered. Part of the deal of ending my program was that I was going to continue my treatment in an “extreme” way and not just go back to the same cycle. This was something that I viewed as I need to continue to shock the system and hope enough fractures can break this cycle. Well this something happened to be ketamine. If you’re unaware, ketamine is a tranquilizer that is kind of famously used as “horse tranquilizer” but was used similar to anesthesia and for other medial purposes in humans. Shortly after this shift in my medications, I start ketamine. I did a lot of research, called multiple clinics, talked to people, I had a pretty good idea going into it, but I didn’t realize how hard getting high was. The way it is used for depression and other mental illness is 4 sessions in 2 weeks, then one a week for the next two weeks.

It was exhausting, super fun, but exhausting. Each time it would end my day and likely the next day too. I also couldn’t drive so I’m living at home so my mom can take me to and from appointments and I’m just spent. What it did do though, was momentarily allow me to feel connection in my brain, put thoughts together, think in a way that I have never really felt. Sure, it’s a drug and it’s gonna do that and when I’d come back it was my cycle again, but those thoughts and mental energy would persist, not fully but in little ways here and there. There are tools we use at work that I know I should learn and would make my life easier but forever I was content being stuck and doing the minimum to get by so I never bothered to learn them but quietly these started to make a little more sense and it was easier to learn. I finished my main ketamine treatment about 4 weeks ago, and goal from then on was to just continue this momentum and try to make incremental steps. That was always my mindset but this time things we were working out. 

Fast forward to this past weekend, I have befriended a group of women from the dog park that I am the only man in this group of 6 women. Side note, the dog park has been another huge help for my mentals. It forces me to socialize, regularly expand from the comfort of the five people I talk to. But anyways, Friday night is one of the girls birthday and we are going out. For me, this is our first time hanging out without our dogs and I’m not nervous but it’s definitely a different energy. We end up going out after dinner and I met a girl (yes grandma, Alec isn’t my boyfriend) and we end up going out Saturday night. We are at improper city getting dinner and planning on going out after and she asks if I want to do shrooms haha. There really isn’t a graceful way to say that lol. Part of my mentality and this momentum I have (plus how I ended up with a girl group of friends 5 years older than me, a situation I truly never thought I’d be in) is that I have been kind of saying yes to everything.

Again, I have been thinking about psychedelics and their treatment of depression and know their ways of helping but those are also in clinical settings and not the streets of RiNo. Regardless, I say yes without hesitation and proceed to have a movie like night. In the words of Thomas Rhett, “It was the 14th (8th) of October … you might think it’s crazy I remember every detail but I do, [that night] was unforgettable.” I saw a guy wearing a Rocky Top shirt and if you’re wearing a Tennessee shirt on a Saturday that they had a trap game in Baton Rouge you know college football so I ended up talking football with him for what felt like 2 hours but was probably 20 minutes.

I was pulling out memories from my childhood watching games in the Gold Crown lobby on those days we’d have a football game in the morning then play 3v3 basketball at night. I felt connected and locked in in a way that I have never really felt in my life. And that feeling kept continuing. All night. Into Sunday, through Sunday and I’m laying in bed Sunday night and I can’t sleep I’m staring at the fan. I am a million different things at once. I’m thinking, connecting, enjoying life in a way that I didn’t even know was possible. I’m having fun, not pain within my mind. I’m driven, I’m making professional, personal plans, and I want to do everything. And I’ve always been wanting to do these things but just couldn’t, or do it all the way that I wanted, but this feeling, this is different.

At the same time, I have had this feeling in bed before where it all just seems so easy and then I wake up and the bell rings for another round. So I don’t want to fall asleep, I don’t want to lose this, but I’m also exhausted and know if I want to do all this I need to rest in this moment. The worst part, yet also the best, was in my legs. When I would describe what it was like in crisis moments, I would describe it as an implosion of sadness and struggle that had consumed me entirely. In this moment, my legs were in legitimate pain, but the pain was coming from what felt like a decade of tension releasing from deep in my quads and calves, it felt as if all my cells were inverting and were freed. It was so painful and euphoric at the same time.

I woke up and still was proper buzzin mate lol manic almost, but just excited. I felt as if I had a fresh start and was caught up on life. I didn’t feel I was chasing the day but was in control, I could do all the things I want and with ease. This is a trivial example but l was always terrible at turning lights off when I leave the room. I know I’m terrible at it, I have been trying to get better since I was 14 and getting in trouble for it constantly, so it was something that was always aware of. I don’t even have to think about turning lights off now, it just happens. 

It’s not until I’m “out of it” or looking from the other side that I can see how much mental energy that it took to get through every day, hour, minute. I was at the point where I would take a nap, wake up and say “oh I have 15 more minutes” set a timer and then when I wake up it’s “oh I still can do 10 more easily” and work my way down to eventually setting minute by minute timers trying to get up and just couldn’t. I felt free of all of that, I feel free of all of that. 

I spent a lot of this week thinking, worrying, is this permanent? Do I have to do shrooms every day? I don’t know what I did to get here specifically and I don’t want to lose it overnight as I have so so so many times. But, the more I settle into this and come down, I realize that it doesn’t matter if it is permanent and this plant did some Snow White potion and individually freed every last cell in my body to function how it was meant to, I now know what it this feels like. People use sadness and happiness to describe depression a lot, but it’s not really that. I was about to say that I now know what happiness feels like, and sure, that’s true to a degree but I have been happy in the past. I live a blessed life and am lucky to have incredible people in it, it’s pretty hard to never experience happiness when that’s the case. But what I do now know is how easy, free life can be, should be. 

I have a lot of thoughts that I have been trying to get out for 10 years and just couldn’t find the words for. There was one night that I came home from the worst weekend of my life, was home alone and just lost it. My mom drive two hours home to be with me and basically held me on the floor all night. I remember telling her that night that I feel like I have this treasure map in my head where I can see all the steps, destinations, but everything in between was just a fog. I felt like I could see things so clearly and was so aware but couldn’t do anything about it, I felt lost in the fog trying to go from place to place and just kept getting lost and ending up back on the floor in my moms arms.

This week, I can see the map. The fog is gone and it feels easy to go from place to place, I have the energy coupled with patience that makes me feel like an unlocked version of myself. And that’s what I now view depression as rather than just happiness and sadness, but it is truly a disease that attacks your ability to function and spreads and spreads (strikingly similar to cancer) until eventually it just erodes your will to live. And yea, that’s pretty fucking sad so it makes sense it’s described as sadness. And on the contrary, if you are able to break the cycle and stop the spread those emotions like happiness and joy are so much more obtainable where as they felt muted, if all present.

I am not writing this and certainly not sharing it to announce I’m “cured” or in remission, I know that it will continue to take work and building on every day incrementally. Not all days will go forward, that’s fine but I feel like I have been blessed with a chance for a fresh start, a chance to be who I have wanted to be for so long and I don’t want to lose it. 

I am writing this and sharing it in particular because the more I think about it, I can see the way that depression attacked and impacted me every day. It was silently crippling me and I felt like I was wilting away. I always felt like I couldn’t be an ally or resource to people with mental illness because while I can relate, that’s about all I could offer. Your guess was as good as mine as to how we got here and how to get out. There were always people that I was being told to talk to and who normal people thought we could “relate to and bounce ideas off of” to one another. While there are always similarities, everyone has their own unique set of circumstances and symptoms that have ended them up where they are. Plus, being an ally while having your own mental illness is similar to the janitor being an ally to chef on the titanic, we are both going down but I guess we can have some fun along the way and do it together. I want to be a person that people feel comfortable coming to, can feel heard and ask whatever they want about my journey, I’m an open book. The key is though, this is purely my journey. I have been through a lot, done a lot of research, feel like I know pretty much about depression and will always been glad to share that. But, the most frustrating thing that anyone in the industry will tell you is that it’s so individualized that makes it so challenging to treat. I know that I’m not the first to feel this way and sadly won’t be the last, but if sharing my story and it reaches just one person that it’s able to help, it’s all worth it.

The other reason I am sharing this is because while I just said it’s so individualized and hard to treat, there is significant evidence of psychedelics treating mental illness. I’ve talked or heard from plenty of people who have experiences similar to mine and I think it needs to be talked about more in discussions around treating mental health. I have lots of thoughts for another time on the mental health field and how we view and treat it, but the really challenging thing about medication is that it’s more or less a guessing game where you throw stuff against different receptors in the brain and hopes it sticks. It’s a bit like changing the oil in your car and just dumping oil on the engine hoping it finds its way to where it needs to go. And they take time.. you need weeks worth of dosing to determine if there’s an effect and if not you’re right back where you started.

Psychedelics are for the most part instant, either it works or it doesn’t and we know results pretty quickly. I’m not saying that let’s just all do shrooms and be high and happy together and everything is solved or that it should be legal, or even used in every mental health patient, but we should very much include it in our discussion of treatments and it should be at the forefront of mainstream mental health care. Unfortunately, years of criminalization and connotation made it very hard to study and thus integrate into our normal lives, not to mention the hold the pharmaceutical industry has on the way we view and treat all kinds of illness. 

I know this was a lot, thank you for reading if you’re still with me. The last reason I wanted to share is because I really do feel like I’m a new person and have a fresh start. It’s been a week, I’m not trying to get carried away, but I wanted to reintroduce myself, let you know where I come from and tell you all as well as myself that it’s a continuous journey that will have setbacks but I feel like I’m ahead for the first time in my life and I don’t want to look back. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going intentionally fishtail down the dirt road I got here on and drive responsibly fast to see my best friend I haven’t seen since August. See you all soon